


they say we won

by elumish



Series: The Return [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s03e10-e11 The Return, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with Pegasus wasn’t the Wraith, it was the Genii.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they say we won

The problem with Pegasus wasn’t the Wraith, it was the Genii. Or, rather, the problem with coming home from Pegasus wasn’t the Wraith but the Genii. Because the Wraith eat people, but the Genii pretend to be your friend before kidnapping you and trying to force you into making a nuke for them.

And it’s not that Rodney thinks he understands what John or any of the other people who came home from Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever feel like, because he knows that he never will, because this was a war but it wasn’t a war zone except when it was, but now he gets the idea of swerving because you think a plastic bag is an IED. Because the first time someone offered him a cookie he thought it might be drugged, and the first dozen times someone pulled out a cell phone he tried to pull a gun he doesn’t have anymore.

And it’s not that Rodney used to trust people, because he didn’t, because if you trust people they sabotage your results and steal your funding, but he didn’t used to think people were going to kill him. Because he didn’t understand why people killed each other, not really, because yeah, money is a thing, and wanting stuff is a thing, but there are so many easier ways to get money than killing someone for it. And ideology—what ideology is strong enough to get you to kill someone else, or more, to throw yourself away for?

But he gets it now.

And the thing is that maybe he’s a little like the Genii, too, well maybe not the ‘torturing people for their city’ part but more the ‘will do literally anything to protect the people they care about’ part, because he will blow up a solar system to save his friends.

But there are things that he doesn’t understand now, or keeps forgetting how to understand, like crowds, because crowds are Wraith fodder and so are lit up cities at night and people walking alone and _children_. And hands on chests are a feed waiting to happen and pale women with long hair and mottled skin are queens and maybe he hasn’t slept in a month because the whole world feels wrong.

He goes to a farmer’s market, once, because he thinks it might feel like one of the off-world markets, and when someone asks him if he wants to buy some beans he barely resists the urge to check the vest he’s not wearing for the C4 he’s not carrying.

And it’s not just the Genii, he’s know it’s not just the Genii, but they’re the prime example, the example that exemplifies the rest of them, the ones who did it first, best, so goddamn well they sent fifty of their own people through the Stargate into Atlantis’s shield, and there may be more than just the Genii, but they’re the ones whom Rodney dreams about when the caffeine stops being enough.

And the thing about the Wraith—what’s always the thing about the Wraith—is that you can see them coming. You might not have much warning, but if a Wraith is standing in front of you, you’re not going to look at them and think friend. The Genii, though, the Genii look like everybody else, and so everybody else looks like the Genii.


End file.
